Drama queens The real outrage is the faux surprise greeting revelations of BY CHIP YOUNG

You didn’t have to tune into the final episode of Sex and the City to be overwhelmed this week by a parade of drama queens in full cry. No, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte couldn’t hold a candle to the emotive efforts of hundreds of thousands of people intimately involved with the Sweaty Sciences, from college to the pros, and from control freak-executive empty suits to those pledged to serve higher education. These folks turned on handkerchief-wringing, head-clutching, heart-grabbing tours de force when the dirt they’d been sweeping under the living room carpet grew to look like it was covering Warren Sapp. Finally, the media started talking about the housekeeping habits of sports’ bigwigs. And like Sex and the City, everybody got a star turn in trying out Claude Rains’s famous line as Captain Renault in Casablanca: "I am shocked, shocked to find that (your vice here) is going on in here." This sense of over-the-top scenery chewing would have made reigning drama/drag queen Harvey Fierstein blush.

We speak, of course, of the revelations that have recently appeared all over our local and national media, "revealing" prevalent use of steroid and performance-enhancing drugs among athletes. No shit, Sherlock. The other great scoop was that recruiting techniques employed by collegiate athletic departments are less pure than the driven snow, college athletes are treated differently than normal students (really!), and some university administrators meet the job requirement of having a Ph.D. in Three Wise Monkeys Studies: "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil."

On the first point, it’s hardly a "scandal" that many athletes, from baseball players to footballers and Olympic competitors, use steroids and other supplements guaranteed to make them bigger. We’re not talking Viagra or Cialis here, although if your latissimus dorsi becomes hard for more than four hours, do seek professional help. The big investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or Balco, which is examining the distribution of steroids to professional athletes and trainers of elite athletes, has made headlines. These got pumped-up bigger than an NFL lineman since the questions include a superstar like Barry Bonds, the National League’s MVP last season, who was called to testify before the grand jury that eventually brought charges against his personal trainer. Total coincidence, of course, that Bonds’s astounding batting, including the season of 2001, when he hit 73 home runs, took place around the time when he began dealing with Victor Conte, Balco’s owner. Add the US attorney’s inadvertent revelation that the Yankees’ recently acquired Gary Sheffield, who worked out with Bonds in the off-season, has also come under scrutiny.

This is just reheated leftovers. Many have looked sideways at Bonds with the suspicion that he may have bulked up on steroids. So what? Even casual sports observer can’t avoid noticing how today’s athletes are almost superhuman in their size and abilities. The difference in the number of NFL linemen who weighed more than 300 pounds in 2003 versus 1983 is like the gulf between the rich and poor in America. The public gets fed a cock-and-bull story, pushed along by a compliant media, about the difference being due to better conditioning, more time in the weight room, and healthier eating habits.

Total BS, it says here. These guys have seen more pills and hypodermics than an emergency room nurse. But that doesn’t stop the drama queens from going into hysterics worthy of Butterfly McQueen, running around in Gone with the Wind, screaming, "I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies, Miz Scarlett."

The only thing that matters to Major League Baseball is being exposed, as if it isn’t embarrassing enough that home run champ Mark McGwire admitted he was on performance-enhancing "andro," a drug that MLB had conveniently forgotten to outlaw when he set his record. With the leak of Sheffield’s name, expect others to seep out from the grand jury, especially if the trainers believe they will take the fall, rather than their millionaire clients who were taking the stuff. But the drama queen workout comes in pretending all of us — especially the scribes who see the bodies change dramatically from year-to-year — didn’t know something eee-vuulll was going on, as Howlin’ Wolf might growl.

Steroids aren’t a college graduation gift. Most college football players could probably pass a tough chemistry class — if their coaches ever allowed them to take one — given their familiarity with pharmaceuticals and performance supplements. But that’s the least worry of college athletic today.

That the University of Colorado is getting scapegoated for its recruiting violations is no "stop the presses" occurrence. But the scenario, unfortunately, has run over into how a number of young women on the Boulder campus, and those who were once there, are making rape accusations against the local BMOCs’ gridiron. Naturally, the media and college administrators across the country are in full Captain Renault mode. Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with what goes on in college recruiting, and what happens to athletes when they reach the campus, knows this is a tragic farce. Top recruits get the prize fillies, who are willing to cozy up to lure their stud, helping coach and the boys make it seem like they’re in for four years of "The Making of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue." That’s being tame about it. This kind of stuff, along with the requisite night on the town carousing, drinking (whether legally or not), and the occasional fight not only takes place, but gets swept away on many occasions by football-lovin’ local police. Ho-hum stuff, really.

What has lit up the Colorado sky is the school’s history of bad behavior — one it could share with many other big sports universities, except they got caught. The current coach, Gary Barnett, didn’t fall far from the Buffaloes’ coaching tree. Under former coach Bill McCartney, the religious enthusiast and "Promise Keeper," some two-dozen players were arrested during his watch between 1986 and 1989. His own daughter was also impregnated by his starting quarterback. Next in the NCAA police lineup was Rick Neuheisel, who had more than 50 rules violations, mostly recruiting, in four years; busy guy. Now the ante is upped, including the claim by a woman who was once a place kicker for the Colorado football team.

Normally, this is where the drama queen label is instantly attached to the victim: She was asking for it. What was she doing at that party with all that prime, virile manly flesh about if she wasn’t practically a whore? The work of defense lawyers in these situations is revolting enough to have been thought up by a Republican political operative, somewhat like the Bushies’ circa 2000 calling John McCain’s wife a junkie and his daughter a wog, or morphing triple amputee Vietnam vet Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden in a TV ad questioning his patriotism.

But the worm has turned out in the Rockies. These have brought out the true colors. The telling one is that of Katie Hnida, who was a place kicker on the Colorado football team. She complained of being molested by players during her freshman year, and then raped by a player the next summer. (Bright note here: going through therapy after dropping out of CU, she enrolled at New Mexico and became the first female to score points in an NCAA football game last year, with two extra points.) When confronted about the charge, Barnett tossed it aside, saying she was just a little girlie, and a rotten kicker, in fact. This reply by Mr. Sensitivity finally brought down the spiked heel of university president Elizabeth Hoffman, who put Barnett on paid administrative lead. Ouch, that hurts! Look how red my wrist is now. (At least the players had a really tight defense. When one of the women accusing the players of rape confronted them, as Sports Illustrated recently reported, they replied, "We’re Big 12 champs. We don’t have to rape someone." That’ll hold up in court, boys.)

Hoffman has endured many of these indignities without calling for heads, which is disgraceful. But while we mount the aggrieved women podium to call for her to be cast out, look at the environment she operates in.

"Oh no, I don’t think [shutting down the football program] is a good idea." Who said that — a big time CU athletic booster? No, Regina Cowles, president of the Boulder chapter of the National Organization of Women. This stouthearted feminist was reacting to the call by Kathy Redmond, founder of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, who said, in essence, to Hoffman, "Nothing is going to change at these schools until people start saying, ‘We will shut you down.’ It would be a beautiful message."

Well, beauty is only skin deep, honey, so don’t hold your breath. Nothing like getting the knife slipped in by a purported fellow advocate of human rights, is there?

Cue the drama queens, led by NCAA president Myles Brand — Bobby Knight’s old nemesis at Indiana University — who says he will appoint a task force to look into recruiting regulations. Oh, that will do it, definitely, Myles. A task force, with all the appropriate public agonizing over "How did this happen?" and steadfast pronouncements of "We are going to clean things up around here." Right. It reminds one of Eddie Izzard’s bit in his stand-up "Dressed to Kill," where he says any good, convincing speech must include huge arm-sweeping gestures, forcefully implying "No!" augmented by nodding and equally demonstrative positive body language indications of "Yes!" The script doesn’t matter, kiddies, just make it look good.

The root of all this evil, where supposedly leading American universities’ relationship with sports and their athletic departments has become a pitiful and transparent charade, is the lack of guts displayed by CU’s Elizabeth Hoffman and her fellow administrators. Sports programs run wild, unchecked by the schools’ leadership. It is true that you can’t teach common sense, for as many degrees as college presidents may have, or as much knowledge as they may bring to the table, some lack common sense and a spine. They have been intimidated by their schools’ sports boosters, who have also given a sense of invulnerability — save for the won-loss record — to the athletic directors and coaches.

Today’s top basketball players view college — if they consider it at all, a la LeBron James, who needed no recruiting visits as he headed for the NBA — as a place to hang out for a couple years to work on their game. Classes? Please. Discipline? You must be joking.

All the education provided by the majority of college coaches has more to do with making sure that their charges know how to do a drop step than read anything more demanding than the instructions on a video game. And college football continues to be nothing more than a free development league for the greed merchants of the NFL, whose taste is equal to the concern they have for the fate of collegiate players. That is why both the NCAA and NFL are fighting the suit against Maurice Clarett being allowed to enter the NFL draft this year without meeting the NFL-crafted, NCAA-endorsed rules against underclassmen leaving "school" (honk!) early. The universities need their ticket sale cash cows for as long as they can milk them, and the NFL doesn’t want the problems that accompany kids entering the league long before they know ding about how to live a life, or risk a devastating injury to an physically unformed talent.

Oh, and would the latter set off the drama queens. Imagine the headlines: "Nineteen-year-old paralyzed after hit by Ray Lewis. Doctors say body unprepared for that sort of collision." Oh, who could have let this tragedy happen, wails the Greek chorus on ESPN.

All this emoting on all fronts is a sham. Many, many athletes are using performance-enhancing drugs because the deal in pro sports (and this includes the Olympics) is that production pays. And in many cases it comes down to who are you going to believe: top sports officials, who get salaries based upon those performances, or your lying eyes? College presidents have long known their job is to stay out of the locker room, even when the empty beer bottles are tossed out the door and you hear screaming women behind it. It is none of your business, Ms Hoffman, et al. Just, in effect, lie back and enjoy it.

This is where we should all start lamenting and anguishing for real.